This area offers activities, readings, and resources for disciplinary literacy instruction in health and physical education classrooms.
High Interest Activities:
Body Image: In this activity, students will participate in discussions about media's messages about body image and the media's portrayal of body image. Students are presented with two images from the media that portray an idealistic body image. (See images below.) Possible discussion starters:
What messages do magazine, TV, and Internet advertisements send to people about body image?
Do you believe there really is an ideal body type?
Is it realistic for everyone to try to achieve the look of advertising models?
Active Vocabulary in Physical Education: Marinette Middle School physical education classes are now starting their time together by running around the gym to the letters that spell the day's vocabulary words. The vocabulary words they learn, spell, and discuss are then added to the word wall. The video below shows how this is working at their school.
Marketing Healthy Snacks Project: With this activity, students develop a recipe for a healthy snack and evaluate it for taste and nutritional value. Then, students imagine that they are going to market their newly developed snacks and design a packaging and an advertising campaign for their snacks.
Dance Steps Exit Ticket: Show students a video of of dance steps, such as the electric slide. Then, before students leave class, they need to write down all the steps to the dance in order. A possible video resource for teaching the electric slide is included below.
Reading within the Content Area
Physical Education - Writing a Letter: Read a current events article about a hot topic in the sports world. Major league sports' drug policies and controversy may a good topic to cover and may increase student engagement. Then, students write a letter to the head of the sports league (i.e. the commissioner of baseball) stating their opinion on their drug policy. Here's a possible article to use: "MLB drug policy will bar PED users from playoffs".
Health - Adolescent Sleep Study Analysis & Discussion: From the Science Net Links website, a lesson provides a link to a study about adolescent sleep. Throughout the lesson, students discuss, summarize, and explain alternative positions on the study's conclusions about adolescent sleep. Access the lesson plan here
Resources
Verizon Thinkfinity The Verizon Foundation's Thinkfinity website has a wealth of resources and lessons for all content areas. Look for the Thinkfinity Resources search box on the right side of the page. You can search by keyword, grade, and subject.
Health Questioning Taxonomy: The Wisconsin DPI has provided a chart of questions aligned with Bloom's Taxonomy. It's a handy resource to consult when lesson planning and looking to increase the rigor of student comprehension.
ReadWriteThink Resources: Readwritethink.org has lots of lessons with reading and writing strategies. They have a series of strategy lessons and activities for reading and writing in the content areas.
Differentiation
Here are some ideas and resources for differentiation when reading in the content areas.
Paula Kluth's Differentiation: This blog, differentiationdaily.com, is written to share "a new idea each day to help teachers reach & teach all learners in K-12 classrooms." She has a designated section for physical education that includes strategies and ideas that would apply to health classrooms as well.
This area offers activities, readings, and resources for disciplinary literacy instruction in health and physical education classrooms.
High Interest Activities:
Reading within the Content Area
Resources
Differentiation
Here are some ideas and resources for differentiation when reading in the content areas.